India’s Place in the New US Indo-Pacific Strategy

Earlier this month, the Biden administration released its new Indo-Pacific Strategy which laid out Washington’s objectives in the region, America’s role in advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific, building connectivity across the region and beyond, pushing for a prosperous region, augmenting the region’s security, and building regional resilience to deal with a range of transnational threats and challenges. A fact sheet on the strategy said that the administration’s vision is to “more firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region in the process” while engaging in “sustained and creative collaboration with allies, partners, and institutions, within the region and beyond it.” In a background press briefing on the strategy, senior administration officials stated that the strategy has two key goals: “to strengthen the US role in the region;” and “to build the collective capacity to rise to 21st century challenges and seize opportunities, whether that has to do with climate, with PRC behavior, or preparing for the next pandemic and recovering from this one.” The strategy rightly placed the United States’ attention on a number of significant challenges that the Indo-Pacific region is faced with, particularly those posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC’s use of diplomatic, military, and technological prowess to establish or nurture its own sphere of influence and emerge as the “world’s most influential power” is noted. The strategy adds that while China’s aggressiveness is not limited to the Indo-Pacific region and is seen across the globe, “it is more acute in the Indo-Pacific” as seen in the trade and economic coercion against Australia, aggression against India across the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the military coercive tactics against Taiwan or the bullying behavior against neighbors in the East and South China Sea, which have had to bear the brunt of “the PRC’s harmful behavior. ” In addition, the strategy highlights the gross violation of human rights and international law including freedom of navigation. In recognition of these threats and challenges, the fact sheet insists that the US will use “all instruments of power to deter aggression and to counter coercion” by a series of steps including “advancing integrated deterrence, deepening cooperation and enhancing interoperability with allies and partners, maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, innovating to operate in rapidly evolving threat environments, including space, cyberspace, and critical- and emerging-technology areas, strengthening extended deterrence and coordination with our ROK and Japanese allies and pursuing the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, continuing to deliver on AUKUS, expanding U.S. Coast Guard presence and cooperation against other transnational threats and working with Congress to fund the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the Maritime Security Initiative.”